The Black Swan

I just finished The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and am still ruminating on it.

The book speaks to my own personal weaknesses with its "everyone is stupid but me" tone (which I like to believe), its scathing commentary on current risk management theory (which I don't know) and mathematic risk models (which I have no hope of ever understanding).  I really felt like I was there with Taleb, laughing over his shoulder as he savaged Nobel Laureates and other established authorities in his field.  His arguments comforted me in my own ignorance of the theories he attacked, making me feel justified in not knowing them.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but not about the book appealing to my baser instincts. You can't help but feel smarter after reading his book, peppered with smart-person terminology (stochastic, epistemiology, Pyrrhonian).

Taleb makes some very strong arguments (at least from my novice point of view) about the limited use of modeling and the need to look at catastrophic events holistically instead of dismissing them as an insignificant aberration in order to keep models on a pedestal. 

I came away from it with a new appreciation for risk management, although probably a false sense of how much I know about it.